Artificial Intelligence And Drug Discovery

Artificial Intelligence (AI) may have some interesting consequences for the patentability of new drug substances. Virtual screening techniques, in which a computer model attempts to identify compounds which are likely to bind to a particular biological target, have for many years been part of the drug discovery process. The amount of time, money and expertise required in order to take the output of a virtual screen and provide a drug with marketing authorisation is prodigious. The extent to which AI will in future be able to reduce the considerable gap between current virtual screening techniques and a marketable pharmaceutical product is unclear, but with many big pharma companies investing in AI it seems likely that powerful new in silico models will have a role to play in shaping the drug discovery landscape.